Quick question for PG. Would you be interested in running a similar event in London? We've been organising an HN meetup for over a year and currently have a community of over 1100 people that would love to attend an event like this. There are also several YC companies including Songkick that have been involved in the meetup that I am certain would be interested in helping out.
If you could find the time to appear at that event, it may be more productive it coincide with the Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford event held in November, or FOWA London on 3-5th Oct, both of which you have presented at in the past.
As one of the founders of http://www.44con.com/ I'd be happy to chat about making this happen. We have everything we need geared up for this and could do it as a free or paid for conference.
What about Paris? I'm hearing from neutral sources (not me, I'm biased) that Paris is ahead of London in terms of startups. I actually was surprised to hear that.
I understand that the language barrier can be stressful for Americans. London is therefore the default choice.
I think it would be great to have a YC-style event in London, although I'd suggest that, instead of waiting for YC to do it for us, why don't we do it ourselves? I'd be willing put some money up to make a London equivalent happen. If anyone's interested in discussing further, drop me a line on jack at gavigan dot co dot uk
I'd love for this to happen, i'm really interested in going through YC and this would be amazing. Also Re: Paris. From what i've heard it's harder to start in France due to how investment law works there. Although i've seen interesting startups across Europe, my bias opinion is that YC should come to London.
another vote for London! there are a lot of people in the world with the desire and energy to build great things that cannot get visas and up and move to San Francisco, in my opinion London is the second best place to be to create a startup.